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Description:

Although the incessant expansion of urban areas is a known striking feature of contemporary transformations of African cities, the factors underlying aspects of mobility disruptions in such fast-expanding cities are poorly understood. Certainly, acknowledging that, apart from exerting profound impacts on landscapes, natural environments, and ecosystems, yet city expansion also results in the growing numbers of people that need to crisscross places for work and other daily chores, making such cities experience increasing and cumulative varied transportation needs (Seto et al., 2012; Elmqvist et al., 2015, Güneralp et al., 2020). Meanwhile, the urban population in Africa is estimated to double in the next 20 years (UNDESA, 2018), while urban land cover potentially triples (Angel et al., 2021). This poses fundamental challenges, not only for biodiversity and wildlife habitat (Seto et al., 2012, Güneralp et al., 2017), but also for the sustainability, resilience, and livability of cities (McDonald, 2015). In this session, we unpack the drivers and socio-economic, governance and planning aspects of mobility disruptions in fast-expanding cities of sub-Saharan Africa. In our work, we have focused on two growing cities, Accra (Ghana) and Dar es Salaam (Tanzania). Despite similarities in how they continuously expand into the rural peripheries, the two cities also differ in the transformations in land tenure systems, governance structures, and initiatives and modalities to upgrade urban transport systems.
In this session, we invite theoretical, historical, and empirical research that attempts to compare and contrast insights on the flood-mobility disruption nexus from case studies across sub-Saharan African cities. We invite papers focusing on one or more cities in Sub-Saharan Africa, including Accra and Dar es Salaam. In particular, we invite papers based on different methods (and combinations of techniques) and sub-themes, welcome papers that discuss:
• Drivers of urban flooding and how they impact transport systems
• City expansion and mobility disruptions interact at a city scale
• How/if recurrent (seasonal) flooding, related to climate change dynamics and beyond, results in mobility disruptions
• How different household types, differentiated according to livelihood situation, gender, location, etc., prepare for and navigate mobility disruptions
• Studies of how road and transport systems are planned and governed at the city and local scales to address recurrent mobility disruptions and their impact on livelihoods
• The socio-economic dimensions of the mobility disruptions and how these are addressed by city governance and planning
• and other topics that bring together critical perspectives on issues related to the law and borders
To apply for this paper session, please email Martin (moteng-ababio@ug.edu.gh), Jytte (ja@ign.ku.du), and Lasse, (lmj@ign.ku.dk). by October 30. Also, please indicate your preference for virtual or in-person presentations (or both), so we can best plan the sessions to accommodate the various uncertainties we all are facing.

Non-Presenting Participants